line also allows is people find each other who normally would never find each other. so if you are a bi-racial one-armed -- living in indianapolis you can find other one-armed soccer enthusiast all over the world. you could all get together on a facebook page and all of a sudden you are united and you know there are a bunch of people out there who are just like you and you can also trade ideas about your identity in the world or how people stereotype one-armed bi-racial soccer enthusiast. you can interact it what i like about social media world is it mobilizes people. i was talking to clay shirky and those who don't know clay shirky he is a professor at nyu who was just really ahead of the curve

in terms of the effect of on line media on social groups and how all this stuff works in terms of media and society and people. one of the things he pointed out was we have a situation where "the hunger games" movie came out and a lot of fans of "the hunger games" book suddenly realized there were characters in a book who were black in the movie and they didn't know they were black in the book. they started posting all this racist stuff on twitter. and then all of a sudden this wave of people, the whole wrath descended on these people to the point where a lot of these accounts that posted the original twitter messages are now defunct and people have walked away from them. what happened was even though twitter allowed people to make comments they also found out there was a whole universe of twitter users who were not going to put up with that and they made it plain very quickly.

that's the gang and the gang of where we are today with on line media and that is why don't believe -- even though they can be problematic and even though people go on them. it's just another part of this whole discussion we are having integrating social media and freedom that social media brings and i think it's important for journalism especially to say we are going to be inclusive in that space as we possibly can. thank you very much. if you want to talk to me later, come on down. [applause] i guess we are going to be signing books over here so if you want to purchase a book and have me sign that i would be happy to do that.

>> joan johnson-freese is next on tv. she argues that our war college system is focused and no longer properly educates her senior military officers. it's a little under an hour. >> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here in cambridge on this rainy night during spring break so i think you for coming and having this opportunity to talk about this book which i am passionate about. i'm very up passionate about professional military education which is why i wrote this book which is as i said my usual arc of search is in security and globalization. so this is a bit of the deviation that one i felt was very important to write about. i want to begin by telling you a little bit about what the topic is and why i wrote about it.

professional military education is the system within which most military officers receive their education after enlistment. its congressionally mandated which is not a choice, not an option. all are required to attend to receive what is called joint professional military education credits. specifically in the book i'm talking about the war college which is the most senior of institutions. it's where the officers are kept at colonel level. when they are transitioning from very operational positions where they fly planes, drive votes and drive tanks into strategic missions where they will be in washington. making critical policy decisions. we at the war college see it is our job to really educate them from jobs which been focused on training and that they are very good at. no one is better at these operational jobs than our american military officers, to jobs that they are not so familiar with in strategic areas

that involve economics, policy, required knowledge of cultural religion and really our education questions that don't necessarily carry with them yes and no answers that they are very used to when they're operating nuclear reactors are flying planes. that being said, i contend in the book that we bring officers in the country to do the best job and that we could in fact do better. that because of structural and systemic issues, we really are not serving our officers as well as we might to prepare them for their future jobs and the country and that we could do a much better job. i would like to just read you a couple of paragraphs here from the book that in a nutshell explained the issue.

consider as you read how would you feel as a parent if your son or daughter between 57,166,000 which is the range of cost per student at the war colleges for him or her to attend a graduate program where there are no academic standards and everyone graduates in 10 months. unless the war colleges are the military equivalent of the lake will begin where all the children are of average statistically everyone graduating from programs where there are no admission standards it's highly unlikely. further if this program will constantly make sure she is happy with what they are being taught by faculty. some of them have neither teaching experience her subject matter expertise. you might have -- about the

educational value of the program. so what are these challenges and what might we do to fix them? i contend in the book there are some things that we can do that are particularly difficult but aren't being done simply because in professional military education there is a default that this is the way we have done it. the first problem i talk about, the student. the students come in because they are congressionally mandated to come in. many of them aren't eager to learn. many of them are very anxious to make the transition. quite frankly, some are not. some of these individuals have not written a paper in 20 plus years. they are very good at what they do but they are not particularly good students in some cases. yet because they are very good at their operational jobs and

the government has sent some -- spend sometimes millions of dollars to train them if they happen to be in the pilot or nuclear field are highly specialized field, there is a requirement that they all graduate. no military officer will be failed or their career ruined because of the academic broke graham and when they attend a war college they get two degrees. one is this joint professional military education degree which again is congressionally mandated. the second, they all received a master's degree. everybody who comes in gets a master's degree. that means the student works very hard and is sitting next to the student who doesn't necessarily work that hard and they are both going to graduate. now, that is not their fault. that is not a problem of their making.

they are the military equivalent of being too big to fail. they are too valuable to the military and the country to fail in an academic or a-gram. so you have a system where coming in the credibility of the program is stretched because there are no failures. occasionally you have someone who because of family issues or some other issue won't complete the program in time and they are simply recycled. but academically i have been teaching professional military education for 20 years now and i have never given a final grade of the c. it's just not given. our range of grades are basically from 84 to 94. now why did i write this book? why me? i am saying things or her pretty critical of my own institution and the second is the faculty. we have a very strong faculty in

many areas and the faculty is very diverse. there are active-duty military officers. there are practitioners which included very high percentage of retired military officers, there are civilian academics and there are civilian academics who are very active in their own professional field. i make a differentiation there very carefully. what happens very often is we will have a military officers show up to a faculty member who last week was on a ship or flying a plane and next week is teaching economics or political science or history or some topic which he will work very hard at but doesn't have any substantive background. and because he doesn't have a background necessarily in the classroom the institution goes out of its way to give them ample opportunity to get good at teaching. they give them more classes to

give them an opportunity to practice and get better at what they are doing but what that means is the stronger experienced teachers that do have the background in the fiel. now when they do get good, usually after about two years then they are gone and we start this all over again. so you have the student body with no academic standards. you have a faculty which is very diverse. everybody is well meaning but some have a substantive background and others don't. and this is all being run by an increasingly large bureaucracy most of them have no background in either education or educational administration. this creates basically a situation and i use the example in the book where i say it would be like putting me in charge of

the helicopter squadron. i would be very well meaning but i don't know what i'm doing. therefore my job, everybody be careful. we have a great safety record here. what happens in education is there is a default position of conservatives possible and keep everybody happy. as a teacher that is not your job to keep things happy. your job is to challenge them, to really get the students and i don't like this expression but to think outside the box. what happens at the war colleges well is that faculty faculty and like a civilian academic institution are not tenured. they are not on a tenured track. they are usually on three or at most four year contracts. these contracts to a very large degree initially renewal of these contracts depend on to the

students like you? what does that do in the classroom? you don't challenge the students because it becomes imperative that they like you. i am very fortunate. a few years ago we had a war college president who was in a merit-based program policy of granting tenure to a small number of people and i am the equivalent. i was called a contract without terms. at about the same time i received this 10 year equivalent there were a lot of retired professional military education faculty members who started writing about the topic and much to my dismay they were maligned by their fellow faculty members and institutions as -- and retired, they are

disgruntled and i didn't see it that way. because i was tenured i decided i was going to write a book about it and this is the resulting book. this is the resulting book which i'm pleased to say started out has been very beneficial in getting this topic done. i started out writing articles for a r. l. defense and u.s. naval institute. i then wrote an article and there was a lot of controversy. sometimes not brought to me directly. and then i wrote the book and i am very appreciative for the academic freedom that they very much support that allowed me to write the book, talk about the book and to really voice my own opinion. this is something that the naval war college to me of all the

professional military education in the war war colleges and there's the army war college and air war college in the marine war college, national defense university, the naval war college. of those i consider the naval war college where i'm a faculty member to be the flagship academic institution because of its strong academic freedom and its increasing willingness to go out and find faculty who are willing. i'm always very careful on occasions like this to say what i'm talking i'm talking for myself and certainly not representing government or government positions but being able to do this is something that is not always the case at all of the other institutions. i took advantage of my position as a tenured faculty member to write this book. one of the things i talk about

extensively in the book going back to this idea of the administrator, most of the administrators are retired military officers. very well meaning, all good americans but again no background in education, no background in academic administration. that means the things they are being asked to do, curriculum development, hiring faculty, promoting faculty, tenure in faculty they have never done before. i spent eight years as a department chair at the naval war college and we would spend a great deal of time in meetings trying to explain to those in charge how things were done in academia. very often, most often the response was well we are not in academia. that is not how we do it which got us to a system of when i

first started working at the war college, every faculty member was hired as a professor. in an environment where we are so rank conscience the idea of hiring people of all faculty members and full professors was just unheard of to us and it hurt the institutional credibility to why they should not inherently -- fell on deaf ears so the problem of having administrators who really have no experience is i think part of the problem. the other part of the problem and i will be honest. i'm writing a follow one chapter with another former department chair captain tony robot he, we are doing a book chapter that looks will at what is the oversight? what is the supervision and there were two basic belief

organizations, but coordinating counsel and of course the military loves acronyms and congress and excuse me, and a part of the pentagon called the j. seven, part of the joint staff. but congress is busy. we all know sequestration is basically taking up all of their time. the economy. now that allows those in the pentagon and those that the military coordinating counsel to basically ignore what i've been told they consider the, the that this book brings, the that other articles raise and things stay pretty much the way they always have. it is my view that we can do some things to correct the situation in the first thing i think we should do is to separate the congressionally mandated military education program from the masters degree.

that would mean very simply that officers who came in and many of them already to come after degree or some of them are approaching retirement and they don't need a masters degree, would come in to simply fulfill their congressionally mandated jcm requirement that but those who wanted a masters degree would sign up on a separate program and it would be a more rigorous program where there was an opportunity to say you have not met the academic qualifications. you have not fulfilled the requirements and they wouldn't receive that masters degree. that would get rid of that 100% graduation rate which i think immediately affects credibility. the second thing i think we need to do is have some sort of faculty tenure program where faculty are not constantly fearful that they will lose their jobs if they aren't happy

with them. him. now there is a big pushback on a substantial portion of the military tenured faculty creates deadwood. it's rather ironic to me that this is being said by individuals who in their own careers, when you reach a certain point of the military you have an expectation that you will continue until you reach your retirement point which is the same thing that i'm arguing for faculty members. furthermore this would not be done immediately. it would be done the same way as a civilian institution where you have a trial period. you don't tenure immediately and there would be six or seven years to see our faculty active in their profession. i think also one of the problems that needs to be looked at is the administrative qualifications of administrators who are in charge of this very important program.

my fear is with all the economic woes in washington that military education will be seen as the low-hanging fruit. it will see -- he seen as the budget act. it shouldn't be. it's something we need to do more of, not less so than their ways to save money. i mentioned figures from 57,000 to $166,000 per per student. why the big differentiation? again i would argue that we have one building and one faculty which actually teaches two courses. the war college senior course and they teach an intermediate course called command and staff college. the air force and the army have two schools and two faculties to teach at each. that would be an easy concept to combine. the naval war college as well we

don't have something called regional studies which are very nice two to three trips where you take students and show them regions they haven't that being. you don't learn anything on a two week junket, you know? let's be realistic here. it is important that we really work on the credibility of the program. it's in porton to the institution. it's important to the students. it's important that we build up the rigor in ways that don't involve metrics. a department chair as a regular basis would be asked to survive the metrics for their return on investment and this is where would get into talking about the differentiation between training and education. there is a real -- which pushes people, a high number of people to get their degrees in technical engineering fields.

understandable when they are flying planes and operating nuclear rep or some submarines but when they are going to washington that's not what they are going to be doing any more. the military unfortunately doesn't differentiate between training and education and in some cases they are governed by the same command, training and education command. give us metrics, give us metrics for how well they are doing. give us metrics for what can we do and how can we do it better? how can we do it faster? education is not something you do quickly. it's something that you need time, to read a book and think about it. we are battling over what we are talking about calendar white space. anything where you don't have anything on the calendar is considered a wasted day. that is a problem. but for our students is important that they have time to

read, think, synthesize and go to seminars and discuss. without that preliminary time there's a tendency to say just give me the answer. just give me an answer in a and a high level of frustration among our student that he would we can give them the answer. when the question is what should we do about syria, there is no easy answer. there is no single answer. we talk about the difference between puzzles and mysteries. puzzles, you can find the answer if you work at it long enough you can put it together. mysteries you may never know in what we are trying to do is make our students understand that they will be comfortable in dealing with problems where they don't necessarily have a bottom-line answer. i would like to read one more portion here.

it's kind of long but this is the last one i will read and then we will go to q&a. it's very simply again why i wrote the book and what i hoped to get out of it. the purpose of this book is twofold, to familiarize the american public and decision-makers specifically the senior war college and to encourage discussion on how to improve the execution of their important mission. the latter purpose stems from the idea that there is always room for improvement. before improvement can't take place though the goal must be clear. but whether war college goals are clear and whether articulated goals are supported by pat this is at the institution is part of the discussion. admiral james savary provided the articulate view at the 2011 competition by describing his own situation when he arrived at national in 1991.

quote i knew what i was good at and what i did well driving a destroyer or a cruiser, navigating through tight waters, leading a party with a swinging letter planning an air defense campaign leading sailors on a rolling ship but i also sensed what i did not know or understand well, global politics and grand strategy, the importance of the logistics nation, how the interagency community worked,. in essence have everything fits together and producing security for the united states and for our partners and quote. the goal of the war colleges should be to educate students in the areas they are not familiar with and take them out of their comfort sound. war college students are senior military officers transitioning from career positions where tactical often technical skills

flying planes, driving ships, leaving infantry to positions requiring a broader view of the role of the military and u.s. security affairs including areas of non-technical non-kinetic nature. global politics and grand strategies are areas with which the war college students are largely unfamiliar but for which some will be responsible in their future positions in other. too often educational achievement in those areas is alluded. sacrifice for expedients of the nation's nations were college. that being the case america is neither getting what he came for in the millions, billions and we spend our's war colleges nor comparing its military leaders and constructive efforts for peace. admittedly the broad range of war college students interest abilities intellectual bent future military profession create challenges in the

professional military education not evident at civilian institutions. it also makes it even more important to continually strive for improvement. i guess i would conclude my presentation with one more point and that is the knee-jerk reaction to the statement of these problems that i hear most often are twofold. one, to close the war colleges. back in the second is close to four colleges and send all these military officers to civilian academic institutions. well i would argue closing the war colleges is not a good idea, that students need this education more than ever but the environment is more complex. the needs are more than ever and second the idea that we can just close the war colleges and send everyone to civilian academic

institutions is untenable. we are talking thousands of students a year. we would want them to go to top schools in the security study programs but there aren't enough of those programs and not enough of those -- so what would happen is the students would end up going to some other school without an appropriate program and take courses which might be relevant to somebody but not to a military officer. so we don't want them just going to any school taking anything. further more one of the key benefits of the war colleges to the students is they meet other students in other branches of the military in other fields and they have an opportunity to talk with each other. this interest them and our networking as a key part of their experience. i have had instances where i

have had two individuals from the navy, one an aviator, we want a submariner sitting next to each other and it's like someone talking to somebody from mars and somebody talking from jupiter. they have no idea what the other does the weather was like. if we want them to fly as a joint military which we do for many reasons, we need them to understand each other which is not available in just any program anywhere. so the war colleges are important. we have to do a better job. i think the first step in doing this and something i've been encouraging his fist. i wrote a book waste on personal experience. i had an opportunity because i was a department chair to sit in on a lot of meetings and hear a lot of things and see a lot of powerpoint slides and by the way one of the bleakest days as chair was sitting in on a

presentation from a three-star admiral who made the comment, gave us a comment about we need to strip all the gold plating out of our curriculum and when it ended a very sad looking captain turned to me and said worby just told not to excel? that was a few years ago. last year i got a call from someone on the navy staff who said we'd like your recommendations for how to improve the program. please keep in mind, we don't need ferrari's. we need fords. i would argue, we need for our ease. i would argue the first thing we need to do is a study that validates or refudiate's what i have said in my book. are we hiring the right kind of faculty? are the goals stated? are they supported by the policies and programs to support the goals?

this needs to be done by an independent body. i was on a panel not to long ago and a former president of the army war college set i will head up that study. well know you have a good interest in the result. we need an independent study to see where we are and where we need to go and i hope all of you will in fact help me raise awareness to this. i feel no qualms in encouraging you to buy the book and by the way don't usually hot i am booked but in this case i do not only because of the importance of the subject matter but because i'm donating my royalties to the wounded warrior project. i don't get any money from it so i feel like i can say please buy this book. with that i would like to open it up to questions. [applause] i would ask you, we are filming this so if you could wait until we bring the mic to you when the questions are raised.

>> we thank you very much for your academic excellence. my question is, as the chair have you ever called other colleagues of yours to let them know this is what we want, excellence -- [inaudible] it would be like telling them that a war college none of them would ever listen to me. thus i have to write this book. give us an enlightenment if you

have worked with your academic colleagues telling them we need excellence. this is our curriculum and this is where we want to go. >> thank you for that question. a small cadre tried hard to fight the fight. we had admiral jake shuford who is very willing to listen to us. didn't always agree with this and it go our way but was very willing to listen. but quite frankly there are, the majority of the faculty were quite entrenched in their positions and quite happy with the status quo. there is an expression that my students tops me this year and it is ducks picked ducks. what does that mean? it's time for promotion and you

are an aviator and everybody in the room is an aviator. they get promoted. you're an aviator and everybody in the room is a submariner. ducks picked ducks. to apply that to the war college basically when you had, when i came there is a high percentage of the faculty members who are retired military. who did they hire? they hired military. so that was a system that they felt very comfortable with but again there were instances, there were a couple of us who tried very hard to put forth programs. i remember one in particular, they had 20 people and somebody said, was arguing, a colleague and i were arguing for a tenured system. he said you don't need a tenured system. does anyone in this room think that you would get fired if you block to the administration and to us raised our hands. the rest of them kind of looked

at us like that's not the right thing to say. so i guess my answer is there were some of us who tried but in order to get the message further and louder i -- a question here. this is my colleague dr. john schindler from the naval war college. he is an expert but i'm a little afraid of this question. >> i find it incredibly fitting that we are having this discussion 10 years to the day of operation iraqi freedom where we have seen a tactical operation by the u.s. military but calling it a strategic failure and died as today while it's easy to of course fault the bush administration and its leadership in why we fell there are a lot of its military to

think -- we had serious reform especially in the naval war college after vietnam in an effort. twofold question. do you think the climate is moving in that direction due to not only your work but the general work in two in the early 70's that took a good admiral and a much lower institution. what would it take now? >> a great question and to take it in two parts, in about 2005, when it was clear that iraq was a strategic failure, there was a mandate dod wide i think that we certainly got it in the end institution and again everything is an acronym, countering ideological support of terror and it basically said we need to think on it roger strategic level. what that meant was in a short period the size of our faculty

grew, rude exponentially and i was able to hire for the very first time an anthropologist, a religion specialist, a counterterrorism specialist and an historian by education, a much wider range of civilian academics and i think that -- we are now past the tipping point out that. we have a geographer at and quite a diverse range of faculty members in the department, regional specialists. my area, space, we have nuclear experts in the wide variety so we are over the tipping point in terms of the wrath of education. whether or not that will continue to evolve again i think depends on the administrators, not just the institutions because i think at the institutional level they deal with things like tenure and

promotion processes. it's going to depend on those in the joint staff and whether or not anybody in congress starts paying attention to this issue. congressman ike skelton is a champion. he was always watching. you know the expression kids don't misbehave when they know their mom is watching. ike skelton is retired in the feedback that i get about this book and about what's going on now is that it's just, pay no attention. so i hope that congress takes up this flag and carries it forward to do again the rather simple changes that i think need to be done. john i would like your opinion. did i miss anything in my presentation? >> no. i think the one thing is that

coming from the naval war college, i am part of the too is the gold standard for all the schools you know and we still have all these problems. i agree with you fully that none of this is fixable without a will to to do it. wewe are not talking about much money at all. it's not a question of might, it's a question of will and i think it also has a lot to do with how important the services and congress think pme is. does it meets the larger goal and i don't think we can emphasize enough that as long as there is a lack of rigor in forced upon the students the message is -- at the end of the day. >> yes, question here. >> this is a clarification that leads to a question.

i don't understand the full context. i understood you to say that it's mandated and mandated by congress and these people are going from tactical military operations to washington which i assume means more policy. the people that do this selected from within their military unit? my impression is that it's not every service person that is going to assist and i'm wondering what the selection process is there and then the advancement and promotion afterwards? >> that is a great question of clarification. it is congressionally mandated that every military officer as they progress in rank receives this j. pme, joint professional military education one end to end that is the intermediate course and the senior course but you're absolutely right that not

everyone that attends war college, the vast majority of the officers receive this through a distance education program and there are many ways that an education program is offered. and there is basically an on line cd realm program which is as good as an on line cd broad broad -- realm program can be and then there are complete seminar programs where it defend naval bases around the country they simulate what they do and newport in a classroom so they have the same direction but the vast majority of the students because it is required for everyone for them to get promoted. a few years ago you can get wavered. if you were in a critical position and you were a pilot and you could say your

commanding officer could say i need joe smith. you could get a waiver. the baby did that so often that there were what they call the waiver babies and congress got rid of the sunsetted nav. they have to get their j. pme. then everybody had to get pushed to the pipeline very quickly and it was a lot of pressure on us to figure out a way to get them there more quickly. this is one a lot of the on line distance education programs were started and it's pretty well non-i'm not going out on the limb here saying that the air force clearly won the battle for who could get the simplest program to get the people through fast enough. it was basically a program where you got it right. that is, that has occurred less now though. the distance education program

and the seminar programs are actually quite good. there is in fact a program in washington, and naval war college program run in washington that's very valuable. it is where a very high percentage of congressional staffers learned whatever it is they know about security studies. many of them came out of oberlin college with a degree in literature and now find themselves on the armed services committee and they take this business education program and really get a strong background, and much background than they would have otherwise of their certainty background but the war college itself, the way people attend, the air force and the army, you are able to attend a resident program based on selection and promotion and it varies by service but it is

based on their best and brightest as demonstrated by their operational job. for the navy, well, on occasion they may find themselves on a ship on friday and at a war college the following friday. some of them quite frankly are very annoyed at a very don't like it. ..

to bifurcate the master's degree in nursing very strong resistance to even consider it not by those who have a vested interest in the status quo or just because that's the way they've always done it. i don't know if the decision can be made there at the joint staff, i too doubt that if congress told them they wanted something done, these organizations would get on it. i don't know that it requires congress to initiate and approve it, but i do know congress could motivate it and make it happen. any other questions? >> i do want to follow up.

looking at the book is getting attention, there is congressional interest, what sense if you have any is being received sort of outside the very narrow halls of those who care about this? we just talked about coming in now, what is your sense of the community? >> i do know that it is getting more attention by faculty members, that people are speaking out. when i wrote this book, it was basically a taboo subject. there have been two individuals prior, two retired individuals prior. one wrote a book on the other wrote a book chapter and they were the zones of ad hominem attack, disgruntled employees and we need pay no attention to them.

i wrote this sense that i'm pleased to say there's been a proliferation of articles and comments and faculty members willing to speak up quite frankly because it's understood now it's out. if you start trying to stifle faculty members, it will be reviewed as retribution. so in that way, there's fire level, id. think there is at least awareness of lines that can't be crossed, just whimsical hirings are lies. again i'm increasingly seen as the problem is that these higher levels where they are tone. one of the reviewers of my book said johnson-freese is like to

take on the echo chamber of military education that pretty much sums it up at these higher levels. again, the big tipping point is going to come if congress starts paying attention. yes. >> i'm interested in what you said about the need for education as people move for different focus. what you said about the flaws in the current system, how does the military see this as damage to his house? to leave the status quo? >> again, very many instances of this is a situation where sometimes rhetoric and actions don't match. there is a lot of rhetoric about we support education, but then if you start in a higher breath, the outermost everydayness types are few and far between.

there's a lot of rhetoric about the importance of education. if events are breaking that down, what they mean its okay we will allow it is for me to go field. i talk about a former student in my book. one of the five best students i've ever taught anywhere. and i've had it long teaching career. he did two tours in iraq, army colonel and wanted to go on and get it up. and the sulfate army he could do that, but only if he got a degree and that he needed to be aware in the army. the value of education, the rhetoric and the action don't match in the navy adage is a

wasted day. there are many admirals who still feel that way. they believe a military officer can learn more by working within direct way than sitting in a classroom and being taught by civilian academics and css. phnom penh had is the expression i've heard more than once. so whether or not they see that the value of not sure they do. one of them in a pickup most often speed up the course, make it shorter. can't you get it done in four months? this is where we get a whitespace argument. if we had them in classroom eight to five and set of 10 months we could do it implies. that's training. that's not education.

yes, question in the back. >> the ever-increasing global world. i'm not sure how much you research what possibly we could gain with the military education to improve our room. >> very several people who have worked on comparative field of military education. we worked on it ourselves. one of the programs we have at the naval war college and i'm proud of his engagement program at the third around the world, where he go and help them set up curriculum, give lectures. dr. schindler and i were in

colombia many times. i've been everywhere from bpo he to irk why to south africa. the thing is most countries build their military education programs based on ours. we are the model. the british have someone of a different system and other countries to slight variations as well. the general rule of thumb is the model is the united states. you will find naval war college curriculums translated into spanish. there's some really important and strong points about that. in ethiopia, for example, a group of faculty members were there helping them develop a curriculum and they noticed everyone was carrying boxes everywhere. they said they are moving to a new building and they pointed

out the new building was being built in the chinese for them. the united states is providing a curriculum. i think that's a pretty good deal. that's the way we had to do it. but most of the programs are built on our model and the value is substantial to have someone like john schindler talking about counterterrorism is very important for them and i would suggest you learn from them as well. >> what we can learn from them. specifically counterterrorism from israel with united kingdom. >> in sensitive areas like counterterrorism, we work with other faculty members and other experts on a regular basis.

did we learn from them in terms of how to better educate people? know, quite frankly there's a presumption of u.s. preeminence and not field. if you could bring the mike forward, john, could you comment on that since you work with other counterterrorism experts on a regular basis? >> counterterrorism and military education is quite close with great britain and israel. i know three naval war faculty that went on academic exchange to israel. i've done a great deal of work with the british equivalent institution. so at the faculty level, the relationship is excellent. there's a lot of lessons learned, lessons identified. we say lessons learned. but yes, that is actually a really excellent relationship.

>> i work on a regular basis of individuals since the security issues and going to geneva in the near future. the substantive links are there. >> the cold war between the u.s. and soviet union is over. however, there may have been areas in which the soviets surpassed the united states in their military education and now that relationships are open, what are we learning if anything? >> the naval war college has a relationship with one of the soviet naval education institution what did we learn specifically? i know this is typical to accept, but most of the time is a presumption that we are the teacher, not the recipient of the information family out to be looking more at that.

we work at these institutions come again in individual subject areas, but overall we are the model. if there's no more questions, thank you very much. i really appreciate the attention. [applause] >> the election is over and the president has been reelected in the new congress sworn in. we have basically what we had before other than the fact we spend $4 billion to have a president be reelect bid in the senate remain a one-party hands. we have affect early gridlock. we have variations on these new terms like sequester. last week in washington that called the snow that never came

to snow quester. things like fiscal cliff we could jump off of and i is not related to the inability to find common ground on the budget. we're going from crisis to crisis and nothing in the election change that. because our beloved nation is divided, the direction we should take as undecided as well and meanwhile the power of compounding is not our friend. our recovery is the weakest it's been in modern times. our entitlement programs everybody recognizes their unsustainable and grow in magnitude. regulations are updated. they're complex, costly and certainly creating way too much uncertainty. our education system does not help enough young people gain the power of knowledge to pursue their dreams as they see fit. debt levels are way too high and rising rather than declining. tax policy is cut way too

complicated and punishes savings and success under social and economic mobility, something that used to define america and we've been proud of for legitimate reasons irrespective of where you start. you can achieve great things. that is diminished. we are the least economically mobile now. our country is changing our political system is not capable rate yet of being able to solve these problems.